Our historic club is in a mess. Arguably the biggest mess it has been in since its formation in 1867. The mid 1970’s years were very difficult, but right now feels worse. The apathy is pervasive. Whether we remain in the Championship or end up in League One, we can’t go on like this.

The current squad of mostly well-paid players have made too many half-hearted contributions to this state of affairs, particularly over the last 2 years. But the owner faces the most anger from supporters, and rightly so in my book. Covid has had a significant impact on the club, and yes, he is currently supporting the club financially, but the fundamental problems at this club go back further than Covid-19. Throwing money at player wages in the Championship, when your club does not have parachute payments, sets the club on a collision course with the FFP rules, if action to avert that crash is not taken. No such action was taken from May 2017 onwards and we are now where we are. Until of course our stadium was sold from under us to try to dodge the collision. But that was not done correctly, so we still ended up with a points deduction!

I think he set out with what he saw as the best of intentions for the club – getting to the PL as quickly as possible. But I don’t think he has ever really understood the club, the community and the city. He has not displayed the level of strategic business acumen needed to run a multi-million-pound complex football club that is forced to operate in a difficult financial and political environment.

Florentino Perez, the President of Real Madrid has volubly defended the European Super League and the need for it by reference to the financial plight of his club. He blamed the pandemic. He did not blame years of overspending on wages that have driven the cost base of the club upwards and upwards. But he now wants football in general to pay the price to rescue his club. The greed of the Premier League so called ‘Big Six’ to join with this approach, and the subsequent anger in response, has created an opportunity whereby fundamental reform of football governance and finance could be on the agenda via the Fan Led Review of football governance, the announcement of which was hurriedly brought forward by government following the ESL announcement.

Would our club have been in the mess it now is if the German 50+1 rule had applied? Or, if there were elected fan Directors on the club board? Or, if there was a Supervisory Board with significant fan representation? Or, if there had been a range of non-Executive Directors on the club board rather than just one man? Or, if there had been a positive engagement structure between club and fan representatives, where key strategic matters affecting the club are discussed with scrutiny and transparency? None of these would have been a guarantee of success, but they would at least have minimised the chances of it happening, and certainly from fans not knowing about it. The case for change in the governance of football at national organisation level and at club level is strong.

I would love it if we could find an alternative and better ownership regime for the club, but even at the best of times finding benign and positive well-funded owners for a football club is a challenge – the chances of finding one in the middle of the economic fall out from a global pandemic are not great. I am a massive critic of the current owner, but I have never signed up to the ‘Chansiri Out’ campaign - what comes after? Until positive change can be driven by a different ownership structure we have to try and achieve change through better leadership, management, supervision, transparency and scrutiny of club decisions.

But the changes outlined above won’t be given to us without a fight. We will have to set out a case, campaign for it and use the fan organisation structures that do exist to help do that. Plus, it may need structured and organised protest to back up the campaign. WOTMT recently tweeted a link to the By Sport film Ours, now available for free on the BT Sport website and app. The film is about the role of fans at football clubs and how, in different ways, they can be a force for good, with some lessons learned along the way. One section of the film tells the story of the fall and rise of Portsmouth FC. As the club was drifting from financial crisis to the crises brought about by various doubtful owners, the fans were organised into the primary forces of the Supporters Trust and SOS Pompey. The former doing all the hard yards of making the case, organising, money-raising and legal stuff, whilst the latter went out and protested and campaigned for change at their football club. In the end they succeeded – a triumph for fan organisation and activism.

We have a Supporters Trust that is now established and can do the stuff that the Pompey Trust did, but its best purpose may not be organising a campaign of protest. That role might be best filled by a different grassroots organisation such as SOS Pompey. But we currently don’t have an SWFC equivalent. Is there anybody out there who wants to set it up? We can't go on like this.